No, for today, we're going to talk about today. Specifically, Hell Week's Beginning.

Hell Week is also known as "the week before the first day of classes," when all the Faculty returns for a week of official welcomes and inservices and all of a sudden, every Tom, Dick, Harriet and Shalomo who's had three and a half bloody months to come in with computer problems suddenly realizes it's less than a week before they go live and they all want help now. Or all want to stop and chat for a few minutes about their specific problems. Or make helpful suggestions for software. Or ask if we really need all this time/space/hardware/whatever....

Tomorrow, I'll be excited and cheerful, but I slept utterly horribly and I need to get back to it, and instead I'm at work. I know -- boo hoo me, right?

I learned about an introduction to art class being held down in Durham, NH, not forty-five minutes from here. I'm excited about it, and may see if I can take it. I'd love to draw. I doubt I'll ever be worth much with a pencil but dang it, I can be better than I am now, and that's worth a lot, isn't it?

There's a lot of stuff I need to bring to the first class, though, and I don't know when I'll actually make it to an art supply store to buy it. Where do you go to get 14x17 "Artist Plate" paper, for instance, and three kinds of pencil. When you've never successfully drawn a straight line, I'd add, and you're not sure what the difference is between a gum eraser, a pink eraser, and a "pliable" eraser?

And for God's sake, what is Sepia, anyway?

Surl surl surl.

I'll still try it.